‘Mud’ is the third feature of one of the more exciting new American
directors, Jeff Nichols. Nichols first came upon the scene in 2008 with
“Shotgun Stories,” one of the more impressive no-budget films I have ever seen.
He progressed in leaps and bounds with his second feature, “Take Shelter,”
which I still consider the best movie of 2011. That movie added to Nichols
repertoire the kind of special effects only achievable with a decent budget.
With “Mud,” Nichols adds the presence of movie stars, something a small movie
can generally only achieve when the makers have a reputation for quality work.
Two kids, Ellis and Nick, take a motorboat out to an island in the
Arkansas part of the Mississippi river.They are adventuring to check out a boat that somehow found itself in a
tree. They find the boat but they also find a man named “Mud” (this is not a
made up name apparently as all the other characters in the story call him that
too) who is hiding out there away from the authorities. Mud (played by Matthew
McConaughey asks for help and weaves a story about killing a man out of love
for his woman Juniper (played by Reese Witherspoon). Ellis, whose parents are
talking of divorce in the background of home scenes, decides to help Mud.
Because as he explains at one points these two love each other. The kid does
not do a whole lot of explaining his actions, which is accurate as he is just a
kid after all and probably wouldn’t be able to articulate what he wanted to say
even if he wanted too. The other adults in the story however take notice of his
odd behavior and sneaking about and provide many opportunities for advice. The
advice varies of course but most of it is about love and it is as helpful as
basically anything you can tell a fourteen year old in vague, uncertain, and
metaphorical terms (the funniest advice comes from Michael Shannon character,
uncle to Nick. He uses a ceiling fan he dredged up from the Mississippi river
to make his point). Some things, kids just need to figure out for themselves.
It is a good question as to what Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan) actually
learns from the experiences he has in this movie other than women are
unpredictable and it (maybe?) is not a good idea to fight with other guys over
them.I am going to keep from
talking too much about the storyline here because there isn’t much more to the
movie than the limited twists to the plot. I could talk a bit about the
performances but I couldn’t really propound on the specialness of them that
much. My best observation I think would be how Tye Sheridan must have a helluva
right hand because he keeps landing punches in the faces of guys twice his
size. It looks a little awkward because he has to reach up so high. I wouldn’t
think the jabs would have much impact but they keep on doing so. I suppose I
could also mention that the Mississippi river looks pretty neat.
You what this movie reminds me of? Those classic Criterion Collection
European films. Ones like “The 400 Blows” and “Au Revoir Enfants.” These are
movies that my book “The 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die” keeps
telling me to see, but for the life of me I cannot understand what makes these
movies great. I understand why they aren’t bad, but why would they be great?
They accomplish perfectly what they set out to accomplish but in the end it is
exactly what it is, not much.
It is a sort of critical paradox that the more a movie tries to do, the
more ways it can fail. I think that may be the reason why ‘Mud’ which does is a
very good not so ambitious movie can score around 98% on Rotten Tomatoes while
Michael Bay’s ‘Pain and Gain’ and probably Baz Luhrman’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (I
say probably because I have yet to see it, will so this weekend) are hovering
around 50% even though they are very dense movies that aiming to accomplish
quite a lot.
You may think you have seen this movie from director Michael Bay before.
You may have taken a look at the trailer, noticed the macho men, the strippers, and the conspicuous consumption of fast cars, big houses, flashy clothes.
You’ve seen it before glorified and sensationalized in other Bay movies like
the “Bad Boys” franchise, “Armageddon,” and the “Transformers” franchise. And
yes “Pain and Gain” has all of that but there is a fundamental difference here.
“Pain and Gain” does not glorify any of that. Instead it has contempt for the
arrogance, greed, and stupidity that all of the above. It’s like Michael Bay
grew a conscience about the types of movies he was making or something. There
is morality in this picture. This movie, like his previous, is still heavily
tasteless of course. It contains gratuitous violence, heavy substance abuse,
and a cast largely made up of beefcakes and supermodels, sure, but it is not an
amoral movie. The message is clear: The characters being portrayed here are, to
borrow a direct quote from the movie, really “fucking dumb,” and the movie
quite successfully makes much humor out of their stupidity. That is of course
before they get so stupid that people start dying. Then the laughs kind of
peter out and one watches the movie in what must be described as a state of
awe.
This is a true story. The screenplay was based off of a series of Pete
Collins’s news articles in the Miami New Times. Now what does that matter? For
anyone who has seen Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” we all know he would gladly
and immediately sacrifice the truth if it means he could use more explosions.
(One of my favorite movie critic anecdotes
belongs to a man who took it upon himself to listen and rank every single audio
commentary in the Criterion Collection. Apparently the best one ever consists
of the science advisors from the inexplicable inclusion of Michael Bay’s
“Armageddon” sharing anecdotes about how they kept on telling Michael Bay that
none of what was on the screen was good science or remotely possible and
Michael Bay ignoring their advice in favor of more explosions.)
And it is true that Michael Bay still does not care about the truth. I
had the pleasure of looking up the news articles and finding out that about
half of what is on screen never happened. But here is the best part: The story
is so wacky and bizarre that I bet you would not be able to tell just by
watching the movie which parts were made up. You may as well flip a coin for
true or false on every unbelievable thing you see. That is after all the reason
the real police (as they do in the movie) did not believe the story and refused
to investigate even in the face of an incredible amount of evidence left over
by really dumb criminals. Imagine my shock when I learned that Michael Bay did
not add any explosions. That one explosion happened. It did.
Mark Wahlberg stars as Daniel Lugo, the manager of Sun Gym. He is the
type of guy who believes big muscles and the right attitude as opposed to say
an education or honest work is the key to success in America. He attends
get-rich-quick seminars from a Tony Robbins-like personality named Johnny Wu,
played by Ken Jeong. Johnny believes in the American Dream and it isn’t the old
1950s consumerist fantasy of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence,
two cadillacs, a wife, and a couple kids. His American Dream is a mansion
bigger than your neighbors, a flashy speedboat in addition to a flashy car, and
the ability to pick up the most expensive golddiggers at the most expensive
strip club. “I had a wife and kids,” says Johnny, “then I stopped being a
loser. Now I have seven honies to pick from.” And Johnny points to seven
supermodels in the front row. Daniel Lugo nods his head and thinks, “Man, this
guy totally gets me.” To my great delight he also references the Al Pacino
character in 1983’s Scarface as one of his role models. Like I’ve said before,
no other statement in a movie or in real life will so easily certify a person
as a Grade-A moron. What is Johnny Woo’s golden advice: “Do be a doer. Don’t be
a don’ter.” This mantra will be repeated throughout the movie to justify
kidnapping a millionaire, torturing him in a warehouse for several weeks,
forcing him to sign over all his assets, and then attempting to murder him. And
then doing it again to an unluckier soul once the original money is all gone.
Nobody has played dim more successfully in more good movies than Mark
Wahlberg has (Boogie Nights, The Other
Guys, Ted) and I’m trying to phrase that in a way that sounds like a
compliment to his acting ability. After all playing stupid convincingly
requires the intelligence to know why what you are doing is stupid and the
humility required with the knowledge you are doing is something stupid. Tack on
that the many scenes where Wahlberg is either shirtless or in a kiss the cook
apron and I think you can say this is a pretty brave performance. The role of
Daniel Lugo could have very easily taken a dark turn and in doing so sacrificed
much of the humor in this picture. For instance at one point Daniel Lugo
decides it is a good idea to take back a malfunctioning chainsaw to Home Depot
for a refund. The chainsaw is malfunctioning because human hair has gotten
stuck in the chain. Only halfway through the conversation with the return desk
cashier does Lugo realize it might not have been a good idea to return a
chainsaw with human hair and blood on it. The scene is macabre but Wahlberg’s
performance never allows Lugo to be a more frightening presence than he is a
laughable one.
This is Michael Bay’s best movie. It is not totally without flaw however.
You may at several points think to yourself, say isn’t this movie running a bit
long. Such is always the problem with Michael Bay. He generally does not
understand that simply because he can do something with a camera, that it does
not mean he should. Each shot taken as itself looks good but there are too many
superfluous scenes that taken in whole extend the movie at least a half hour
past where it should end. I am still of the belief that one of the best things
Michael Bay has done was achieved when he still made commercials. He is after
the creator of the first “Got Milk” commercial; a true achievement in how much
information can be conveyed in a one-minute time frame. The important thing
about this movie though is that Michael Bay limited himself to 25 million
dollars and almost no special effects. As such, the movie is far more
interesting to watch than the epics of catastrophic proportions known as all
his other movies. I swear the more limitations put on the man, the better his
movies will be. When he gets several hundred million to make his movie and
creative control as well they turn into three hour long gargantuan messes. Pain and Gain succeeds where his other
movies fail more because of what he is not doing (focusing on robots and
special effects) than what he is doing (characters and story). I hope he makes
more small movies in the future.
It is at a time like this when the death of Roger Ebert comes into full
focus. Ebert never wrote better reviews than when they were aimed at a Michael
Bay feature. I would have loved to read his review of this movie. Perhaps we
can imagine his surprise when he found out he did not completely hate it.